I have a collection of old books that were left mostly undisturbed for circa 40 years under the stairs in my father’s house. I would say his collection was from the 60s (with maybe a little from the 70s) and is made up of westerns, sci-fi, spy thrillers and film and TV tie-ins. The stuff looks, to my eye, to be very dated and of no interest to modern readers.
I need to dispose of it. No one in the house is going to read them. The local library took a stack of westerns but had no interest in the rest. I don’t want to sell things online as it will take years even if it results in any takers, which is unlikely. The charity shops are overloaded and certainly don’t want tat from the 60s when tat from less than 15 years ago probably doesn’t shift. There is one last option before I put them in the recycling bin to be pulped. The local library has a red waste bin for donations. I don’t want to take the effort of hauling large numbers of books over to them and leaving them with unwanted books they can’t give away. So can anyone confirm if there are any potential readers out there for the following authors?
Isaac Asimov (60s and before stuff with pulpy covers)
Ed McBain (thin novellas with pulpy covers)
EE Doc Smith
Donald Hamilton (Matt Helm author)
Edward S Aarons
Perry Rhodan (very 60s looking sci-fi)
John Creasey (Toff detective author)
Jean Bruce (pre-Bond French spy author)
We periodically car boot books and they’ll go if they’re clean an reasonably priced.
Just put an advert online offering them for nothing. Someone will pick them up. Or leave them in the street with a “free” sign over them.
That’s what I would do.
A box (or a few boxes if there’s space without causing an obstruction) somewhere with footfall, with a sign saying “Free books. Help yourself”.
Readers love to read and some of them will read pretty much anything.
Better still, a sign saying “50p each”. They’ll be gone in no time.
Did I tell you I live in Hull?
Hope you don’t live near my brother-in-law’s son – he refuses to read second-hand books in case the previous owner ever read them on the toilet
As long as they are not used to wipe I would take them
Tangentially, I have friend who is the most fragrant and adorable human being, but she has a shelf of books over the lav in her downstairs bathroom. Every time I see this, I feel a bit 🤢. Is this normal or, for once, am I the normal one..?
It is normal. Is it worse than people leaving books next to your bed? I mean…
….oh dear, I’ll keep the rest of that thought to myself.
I have an academic pal with two offspring who were very boistrous when they were little. He would take refuge in the downstairs loo.
It would be more accurate to describe this smallest room in the house as a library with a toilet in it – bookshelves adorn all four walls.
Traditionally that was the role of the outhouse – a place of merciful solitude where the man of the house could sit down and read the paper* in peace away from screaming kids, usually while smoking a Woodbine.
(*the Racing Post, Exchange & Mart or the Daily Mirror. Never The New European or Cahiers du Cinema)
It’s only if people handled the books after wiping their arses and not washing their hands that I’d be concerned.
I did some electrical work quite a few years ago at a small local publisher’s offices. The loo there had bookshelves with copies of all their books that were in print.
@Mike-H
As far as I can see, there’s only two ways you could tell.
The first is a slightly more nebulous approach and involves asking the books’ previous owner.
The second is a rather more definitive approach – I’m sure you don’t need me to colour between the lines for you
What – there exists people who doesn’t read on the loo?? What a waste of their time!
I’m afraid that the time spent on the loo by me wouldn’t allow me the time to read the back of a cereal packet let alone a book.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book on the loo, which means I’ve never thought that a second hand book would have traces of faecal matter.
Well, I suppose it’s different for women. We sit down for both practices, for a start. And instead of needing a book because we have to spend so long in there, we bring a book so we don’t have to leave the loo so soon – knowing that on the other side of the door awaits a million chores; to do or to feel guilty about not doing. The kind of chores that a lot of men don’t seem to be aware of, and thus feel no guilt about not doing them… 😉
I don’t know how other people handle books, but I can safely say that no amount of reading a book in the bathroom has made me suspect for a second that it had been contaminated by anything. The book obviously gets put to the side (on top of the washing machine) before toilet paper is reached for, and certainly not handled again until hands have been properly washed.
It seems like a paranoid and silly idea to me that a book would have to be thrown out for having spent time in that room rather than any other (probably less vigorously cleaned) room. But if my books are contaminated – so be it. My books, my bodily waste, my bacteria. If that can serve as a deterrant for people who wants to borrow my books – hurrah! 😀
The defaecatory equivalent of spitting in your own cup of coffee before leaving the room. Possibly for that very reason.
“practices”? Woah, what a world there is there!
I don’t have to practice, I’m very good at it – I thangyewwww
@Locust couldn’t agree more. I read every day of my life in the bathroom and have never considered it odd nor have I considered the risk of bacteria.
Doesn’t everyone do it? They’re weird if not.
Agreed. From childhood on. Beano Annuals in the loo.
And Giles annuals!
Thank you! I was beginning to suspect that the Afterword had gone collectively mad – all turned germphobic from the pandemic…good to see a few sane people owning up to reading on the throne. 😀
Then weird I am.
I shall wear that badge with honour.
I used to read a book walking home at night using the streetlights, tilting the book for maximum illumination
As a young tyke I used to read comics walking along my road. Until one day I walked into a concrete lamp post and banged my head and knee, raising a big lump on my forehead.
Did it have wavy lines coming out of it?
As an undergraduate, I once walked into a lamp post. It was dark, I was talking to the young lady by my side, and not watching where I was going. I was distracted by her, um, charms.
The nice man in the kebab shop gave me a bag of ice for the lump on my bonce.
If she was that, er, charming it’s lucky it was only your bonce.
Normal. I have a couple of loo reading books on the cistern. The only concession I make is that when it is time to replace them they go in the bin rather than the charity shop pile..
More likely to be Wordle with your turdle these days I should think.
We have a local ‘Freecycle’ facility – where it’s free to advertise stuff online. I’ve got rid of boxes of old mags on there, and the best thing is that whoever wants the stuff has to come and get it, as they are not paying for either the items or the postage. Some chap took a monstrous box of old ‘Look & Learn’ copies, and another took a massive box of ‘Knowledge’ mags. I know both can be bought on eBay for 50p an issue or whatever, but really, I don’t have enough years left in me to spend any of them mailing off back-issues one at a time for little profit and a lot of hassle. Freecycle: you know it makes (it easier that driving them to the tip) sense.
Freecycle is everywhere, set up as local groups. We’ve used it and it is indeed ace.
We’d accumulated about seven miles of bubble wrap over several years because “you never know when you might need it”*. I stuck it on Freecycle and literally half an hour later someone came round to take it off our hands, Hurrah!
(*behave!)
Lots of those will have prime Chris Foss covers. So an alternative would be – shudder- to rip the covers off, frame them and recycle the unreadable Perry Rhodans.
While you’re at it, you can frame the LP cover of the Ian Gillan Band’s “Clear Air Turbulence”, because that’s a Chris Foss work, too!
Foss did some of the preliminary work on Alien before Giger came in, I think.
And a version of Dune
And The Joy Of Sex.
The Joy of Sex illustrations were rumoured to be self-portraits.
I’ll probably try putting one box at a time on the curb with a ‘Free Books’ sign on it. I really can’t imagine anyone taking anything but at least I can say I tried to upcycle the books.
Readers Digest was the publication of choice in the family loo at Wells Estate.
I now use ‘final stages of the Readers Digest Prize Draw’ as a knowing euphemism. Did anyone ever actually win the bloody thing?
My lav in a previous batchelor heaven had a magnificent reading pile; lots of copies of “The Word”, “Mojo”, the Christmas “New scientist”, copies of “New Statesman” and “The Spectator” (for political balance), etc. You could be in there for hours.
You really ought to get that lock looked at @Vincent